Comment by raincole

The context matters when we talk about Joel's article[0].

It's about Netscape. By the time, Netscape had dominated the browser market. It was the leader and that means they had all the market share to lose. You can bet Microsoft's decision makers were very closely monitoring what those at Netscape were doing.

Today, practically nobody uses Ladybird. No one even knows it[1]. It's so behind and has nothing to lose. If you really want to rewrite, it's better to do it when you have nothing to lose.

[0]: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...

[1]: to quote Joel, "no one" means less than one million people.